O'Malley wins Baltimore mayor's race

BALTIMORE (AP) - Mayor-elect Martin O'Malley will now have a chance to see if his
zero-tolerance policing strategy can reduce crime and lure back residents as promised. And
he will get five years to make it work.

O'Malley described his landslide victory Tuesday over Republican David Tufaro as a
mandate and attributed it to "the goodness, the fairness and intelligence of the
people of Baltimore city in realizing that we can't go forward as a city until we deal
with our public safety problem."

"It's one thing to establish a vision, it's another to establish a business plan
and that's what we need to do now," O'Malley said.

With 68 percent of precincts reporting, O'Malley had 61,641 votes, or 91 percent.
Tufaro, a real estate developer and political newcomer, had 6,355 votes, or 9 percent.

Voters also decided to postpone the next mayoral election a year to make it coincide
with the presidential election in 2004. The change, promoted as a money-saver, would give
O'Malley a five-year term.

O'Malley became the first white mayor of this predominantly black city since 1986.
Baltimore now joins other predominantly black cities such as Oakland, Calif., and Gary,
Ind., that have elected white mayors in recent years. The 36-year-old City Councilman, who
has been a city prosecutor and defense attorney and leads an Irish musical group, also
becomes the youngest mayor in city history.

O'Malley, who beat two black frontrunners in the primary, will take over from Kurt
Schmoke, who decided not to seek a fourth term. Schmoke said O'Malley "identified an
issue that was of concern to all Baltimoreans regardless of race and regardless of
class."

O'Malley gestures to supporters on Tuesday night (AP).

Schmoke said O'Malley's immediate priorities will be finding a police commissioner to
replace Thomas Frazier, who resigned to take position with Justice Department. Frazier and
O'Malley were often been at odds. Frazier supported community policing over the
zero-tolerance strategy.

Schmoke has said in the past that he feared zero tolerance would increase police abuse.
"There was a lot of worries at first about people going overboard, but I don't think
that's going to happen," he said Tuesday night.

Zero-tolerance policing, in which all crimes no matter how small are aggressively
enforced, has been advocated for years by O'Malley, who credited it with lowering crime in
New York and other cities.

Critics raised concerns that minorities would be unfairly targeted, an issue that was
clearly on O'Malley's mind during his acceptance speech.

"If police officers break the rules, then together we must have the political
courage to discipline or prosecute our own police," O'Malley said. "And if our
officers are justified in their actions to protect our citizens, then together we must
also have the political courage to back them up."

Tufaro, who waged a spirited campaign in a city that hasn't elected a Republican mayor
since 1963, called on residents to support O'Malley.

"I know all of us that love Baltimore will support your efforts to make Baltimore
a better place to raise our families," Tufaro said.

Voters also chose 18 members of City Council, including homeless advocate Bea Gaddy, a
political newcomer. Republican hopes to win a City Council seat for the first time in 60
years appeared doubtful.

O'Malley won the crucial primary election by appealing to voters weary of the city's
more than 300 murders a year. But since then, he has been criticized by those trying to
link zero tolerance to the police killing of a black car theft suspect. Larry Hubbard was
shot in the back of the head Oct. 7 as two white officers tried to arrest him. The FBI and
the Justice Department's civil rights division are investigating.

Opponents said O'Malley's zero-tolerance rhetoric may have encouraged police brutality
even before he got into office.

O'Malley has argued that making streets safe will stop the exodus from Baltimore, which
suffered the second-biggest drop nationwide in population between 1990 and 1998.
Baltimore's population declined 12.3 percent to about 645,000.

During his acceptance speech, O'Malley was surrounded by such Democratic leaders and
supporters as Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr.,
his father-in-law; NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes; and the Rev.
Frank Reid, pastor of the city's largest black church.

A problem with the Board of Elections' $6 million computer system delayed the vote
count. Vote totals contained on cartridges from the city's 989 machines could not be
scanned into the database and had to be entered by hand.